Does It Catch Mice?

A K12 education blog exploring innovative school design and classroom practices that are able to prepare student learners for tomorrow's world, with a special emphasis on how technology is playing a role in this process.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

It's been awhile since our last post; I guess that's what a new job and a new country will do. Since my last post, I made a move in July from Budapest, Hungary to my new position as Head of School in Shanghai, China at the Shanghai Community International School (SCIS), Pudong Campus.

As you can imagine the transition is keeping me busy.

SCIS is a few months away from (hopefully) becoming an IB World School - implementing the Primary Years Program (PYP) and Middle Years (MYP) to join the already established Diploma Program (DP). These programs are grounded in inquiry and conceptual-based learning. Unit plans and programs are in need of review and revision to align to this philosophy. It's a transition that is worthwhile, but now without its bumps.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

In the earlier post Who Do Our Students Consider The Audience For Their Work? (originally posted in Smartblog for Education), I advocated that by providing rich, complex, authentic classroom tasks, we open the door to expanding the role of students. They move from producers to evaluators of their classmate’s solutions. I shared that we need more environments like this because they enable students to be engaged in creating with content and the resulting products are far more meaningful in fostering learning that will stick.

I’d like to add a Part 2: These environments are far more powerful and effective in fostering reflection and growth about each child’s learning process.

To be clear, students can and should be reflective learners in any environment. Many would agree that the most important skill we can teach is that of learning how to learn. But when we transform traditional units of study into truly rich, PBL, inquiry-based environments, we provide an environment where high-level cognitive activities have greater potential to surface.

1. Students As Evaluators

Traditional environments ask students to turn in work to the teacher for evaluation; students are seldom placed in the role of evaluating quality of their own work let alone another classmate. Because traditional assessments rely heavily on the recall of knowledge or demonstrating longer forms of recall through the ‘synthesis’ of producing essay responses “The three main causes of World War II were…”, it is likely safe to say that there is actually minimal benefit from having students be evaluators in these types of tasks. It can be argued that students might learn how to write a better essay, but it’s highly doubtful they will learn much more about World War II by peer reading essays.

However, when we provide open-ended authentic tasks, students are placed in the role of evaluators, thus allowing them to see the many varied ways that these problems can be solved. What resources did this student consider? Which parts of her solution were effective? Which parts have not been addressed? Inevitably, students who are placed in this role are asking themselves , How is this student’s solution and rationale different than my own? Assessments - and the diversity of solutions that they bring about - enable students to learn as they evaluate. To be clear, I am not saying that the idea of students as evaluators has to play a role in the actual grading. It could. But if we are truly leveraging authentic learning tasks, then we need to recognize that empowering students as evaluators we create a powerful learning tool.

2. Students Reflect On Their Learning Process More Meaningfully

Again, within a traditional classroom, we can and should ask students to reflect on their process.

However, these reflections can lack depth because the student was seldom in control of the product itself. Asking students to reflect on their learning in a traditional assessment usually garners answers such as:

“I should have worked harder / started earlier.

“I should have focused more on Chapter 2.” (Usually, this is because the assessment had more Chapter 2 questions than the student envisioned.)

“I should have taken better notes along the way.”

None of these responses are bad. But they are limited because the tasks tend to be limited. Students are missing out on the chance to create a solution by using content. When these type of PBL tasks are used in the classroom, student reflections can include the statements above, but they will also open up deeper reflections including:

I should have considered more viewpoints before I came to my conclusion.

I knew my research / facts well, but I wasn’t very effective at communicating my plan to my audience. I forgot that my audience is more concerned about ____, ____, and ____ .

I would have been more effective by acknowledging the weaker aspects of my plan in advance.

I had a strong, well-thought out message, but I chose the wrong medium for how to present it to my audience.

3.Students Tap Into The Power Of Social Learning

If our learning tasks are asking students to (hopefully) produce the same type of answers, there is little incentive for students to want to learn from each other than trying to ensure that each of them has the “right” answer. When we open up problems with multiple pathways toward different solutions, we not only can see the pathways they take; we provide an environment where they seek out and learn from one another along the way.

When student work has an authentic audience (and especially if that audience can be students themselves) within our inquiry based, PBL classrooms, we not only end up with student work at a higher quality. We open up avenues for learning and reflection that simply aren’t possible if the teacher monopolizes the role.

All of this is (slowly) coming together in my mind on the heels of reading Kath Murdoch’s The Power of Inquiry - highly recommended- and my attendance at a 3-day workshop on the International Bacculareate’s (IB) MYP & PYP Programs. I’m excited for my next position as the Head of School for the Shanghai Community International School where we will be starting the PYP and MYP programs which advocate these authentic, complex, inquiry-based environments.

I’m sure there will be some joys, challenges and more than few “a-ha” moments along the way.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

A recent survey of teachers by Education Week pointed to some disappointing results.

The title says it all: Teachers Still Struggling to Use Tech to Transform Instruction, Survey Finds

What is encouraging is that the title acknowledges a worthwhile goal - going beyond technology integration and aims at transforming practice.

The survey found that the strongest area of integration occurred in drill, review, practice problems. While that area shows promise in using personalized learning data to customize student pathways (identifying strengths, weaknesses, and pacing), at it’s core it is usually serving a very traditional goal. It transforms instruction in helping students get to the traditional “goal” faster, but it does little to transform education.

This more lofty goal - using technology to transform education - is an area where we are just getting started. Are we utilizing technology to transform the type of learning that is possible? Are we moving beyond recall and asking students to...

The other areas from the survey (games, collaboration, projects) represent integration goals which have greater potential to transform instruction and education to better target the skills we need for students in the 21st Century. We should continue to explore, research, and create in these domains.
Unless we ask the larger question, we will be limited by focusing our technology goals on helping us meet yesterday’s education goals. Our students (and teachers!) need us to think bigger.

Friday, April 17, 2015

(This post was
originally shared on ASCD's
SmartBrief and is modified from it's earlier post.)

GBL and PBL Sitting In A Tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G“Hello
Games-Based Learning; this is Problem-Based Learning.”

Like two pandas
in a zoo, we need to do all we can to ensure that these two find a soul mate in
one another.

Games, by
definition, are meant to be fun. But, in the race to transform schools, we’re
missing out if the goal of games-based learning is to help us run that race
faster or provide students with more fun while they run. We’re running towards
the wrong finish line.Games transform
education and learning. The question is: transform “towards what end?” If our goal for
games is to take traditional school content — multiplication tables — and spice
it up as more fun for students, then we are missing a golden opportunity.In the 2013 research from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center on
short-form games (quick tools for practice) versus long-form games
(higher-order thinking skills better aligned to the Common Core), they
rightly advocate that there is significant potential for these long-form games
to transform education. We've all heard
the familiar student refrain, "Why are we learning this?" Short-form
games can decrease this cry, but only temporarily. Any game, by
definition, has a context. But if games are only taking our same-old
learning outcomes and making them fun, then we're missing out.

Games have the
potential to set a context and purpose for learning that is rich, complex
and authentic — something followers of problem-based learning have been
advocating for years. This is an element of game design we need to better
leverage.

The descriptors below are not unique to each model; there is significant overlap. But like pandas at
the zoo, we need to foster collaboration between the model of
Games-Based Learning with those of Problem-Based Learning.

Games-Based Learning

Problem-Based Learning

dynamic environments

context rich, authentic, real-world environments

immediate feedback, where failure is a natural part of the
learning process

open-ended solutions with no “correct” answers

multiple decisions / choices

authentic audiences for student work

clear goals

recall not sufficient, application of content / skills is
required

meta-cognition (“How am I doing?”)

naturally holistic and cross-disciplinary

The best games — with or without technology — can set
a context for learning that can combine the characteristics above to
create new types of learning environments.

These environments will:

Empower teachers to customize the environment dynamically,
so that content can be specialized and individualized as needed.

Enable students as creators of solutions — beyond recall and
decision-making.

Encourage students to be environment evaluators — aware of
each others’ creations/ solutions.

Allow students — and the teacher — to act within an
interdependent environment, where the actions of one user affects others.

Respect that people are social learners. They make meaning
from, with, and for each other.

Provide a context where the game is not the teacher of
“content” but rather it is the “context” through which learning happens.

See learning and assessment as individualized. The teacher —
not the game — is in charge of the learning and that happens at the teacher-student
level. The game is simply the introduction to that interaction.

Strive to mirror the real world by giving students multiple
roles and goals which sometimes conflict. Students are not simply an all-out
pursuit of a single goal as they strive for points, badges or rewards.

This does not mean that all games need to fit into this
category to be useful. Creating games that get us to the very limited goal of
content recall can be one piece. But we should distinguish this from the nature
of what games can be and the role they can play in transforming education.
Otherwise, we’re just running the race faster to an out-dated finish line.As we gamify our schools, we’re missing a huge opportunity
if we’re not considering “games” in multiple perspectives. Certainly, the
combination of PBL and GBL elements has vast potential for changing the way we
prepare students with the 4 Cs of the 21st Century.
It needs to be on our radar; we need to use our limited time, energies and
money to to scrutinize our understanding of games to create these new,
transformational learning environments.There is no silver bullet. Creating games like this can’t be
done with every topic and it’s not always the most efficient way to get
students from A to B.Not every panda-romance is a match made in heaven. But, for
the propagation of the species, we need to encourage this budding romance to
grow.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Came across this simple scale from the LoTi® Organization .A fantastic way to help all of us get a better sense of what innovative learning can be. PBL, GBL or anything else - this scale speaks for itself as great learning.Enjoy.